Viswanathan K's Thoughts

We humans have lungs. But ants don’t. Why do some living things need lungs while others don’t?   In So Simple a Beginning , Raghuveer Parthasarathy starts from the basics. All creatures need a way to exchange gases, usually to take in oxygen and remove carbon dioxide. The easiest way is for the surface of the creature to do the gas exchange. A tiny creature like an ant does exactly this – the surface areas of its internal tubing is sufficient for gas exchange of its tissues.   Next, take a larger creature. Simple physics kicks in. The surface area of the living thing increases as a square of the increase in its length whereas its volume increases as the cube. If you increase the length by a factor of 3, the area increases by a factor of 3 2 = 9 times while its volume increases by 3 3 = 27 times. The volume, as you see, increases much faster than the area. The larger volume means the creature has a lot more cells, which in turn means, the creature needs a lot more gas...

In China, Kublai did what the Romans did for northern Europe, writes John May in The Mongol Empire . By that, he means the creation of physical artifacts (roads, canals) and systems (efficient taxation, trade, postal-relay). And of course, the introduction of paper money (as an easier, lighter, convenient alternative to coins made of various metals). ~~   By the time Genghis died, the man had created an empire 4 times larger than Alexander’s and twice the size of Rome, ha had not made great inroads into China. His successors doubled that size.   And yet, while the Romans have left a lot of both “hardware” (aqueducts, stadia) and “software” (art, law, language), very little of either survives from the Mongol era. (Other than in China, as we saw in the earlier blog on Kublai). “No buildings, no philosophies, no universities, no moral guidance, no literature for the subject peoples.”   Why the difference? “Because the Romans, the Greeks and the British had something to say, ...

Many say the railways were a positive product of British rule of India. Shashi Tharoor’s An Era of Darkness looks into this. In 1843, Governor General Lord Hardinge was at least honest when he said that the railways would be beneficial for the “commerce, government and military control of the country”.   Look at how it was constructed. (1) The British government guaranteed 5% return on bonds (very high for that time) used to raise money to build the railways. And why not? After all, it was taxes on India that would be used to pay the interest, not British taxpayer money. (2) This created a perverse incentive for British companies laying the tracks in India. That 5% interest was on the principal, so the more money the company claimed it needed, the higher the interest payment. Thus, there was no incentive to optimize or reduce costs. The opposite was the case. Each mile in India thus cost £ 18,000. For comparison, a mile at the same time was costing just £ 2,000 in the US. ...

Large organisms don’t look anything like magnified versions of tiny organisms. Why not? Because of the (physics) principle of scaling. And it’s not just limited t0 physical structure. In So Simple a Beginning , Raghuveer Parthasarathy asks an interesting question: Why can’t a bacterium swim like a whale?   Swimming involves pushing the water to move. There are two aspects that make this action hard: inertia and viscosity. The ratio of these two forces is called the Reynolds number. The higher the Reynolds number, the higher the inertia. Which means the liquid appears turbulent to the act of swimming. The lower the Reynolds number, the higher the viscous force.   Wait, it gets trickier. The Reynolds number also depends on the size of the object trying to swim. To a tiny bacterium, the water has a low Reynolds number. But to a whale, the Reynolds number is huge. This has other consequences: “This fact has deep consequences for how aquatic creatures can or cannot move....

In The Mongol Empire , John May says: “Two of the strangest (things) are that today’s China owes its shape and size… to a barbarian non-Chinese who was its greatest enemy; and that the same barbarian is now honoured as an insider, the founder of a Chinese dynasty.” It also explains why China considers Tibet a part of itself.   No, this tale is not about Genghis Khan.   Genghis’ descendants split the empire. Some ruled the Middle East, others towards Hungary, and the last group a little into China. “Little” is the right word, China was huge and had different rulers in different places. It was on the Chinese side that Kublai was the frontman for his brother, Mönkhe.   After hard fought wins in China, Kublai followed Genghis’s approach. Mass slaughter was perpetrated on the losers only if it would serve as a signal to the next kingdom in their path – surrender and you live, fight and be slaughtered. But if there was no kingdom nearby waiting to be conquered...

The British are often credited with creating the civil services in India. Take a closer look at that institution, says Shashi Tharoor in An Era of Darkness . Indians were only recruited for the lower-level posts. Conversely, they were never allowed to rise above a certain rank.   While that was the practice, the British were careful to keep up the pretence that the locals could rise through the ranks. The reality, as the viceroy Lord Lytton wrote was very different: “(Let them believe that they are) entitled to expect and claim appointment in the fair course of promotion to the highest posts of the service. We all know that these claims and expectations never can or will be fulfilled. We have had to choose between prohibiting them and cheating them, and we have chosen the least straight-forward course.”   Today, we know that many bureaucrats in independent India have the experience and capabilities of General Managers and CEO’s of corporations. No such human capabili...